Hello ladies, gentlemen, and creatures lurking in the shadows! This month, October, is a favorite among horror fans, such as myself. My goal for the next 31 days is to share with you the scariest and best of the genre. The films will range from old school classics to modern day gorefests (they won't be in any particular order). So scout these movies out, grab a bag of popcorn (or a blood bag) and enjoy!
Friday the 13th (1980) Dir. Sean S. Cunningham
I know it's not perfect and we're a day behind, but I guess we'll have to make due with today being Thursday the 13th. Friday the 13th, not the day, was a part of the "slasher" horror movie movement of the 80's - where teenage camp counselors were violently killed off one by one faster than a Kenyan in a foot race. Although it's kind of cheesy in parts (even when it came out critics blasted it), the unexpected death sequences and the bone-chilling "ch-ch-ch-ch....ah-ah-ah-ah" soundtrack make this film stand out among its peers - along with two bits at the end of the film that I don't want to spoil for those Friday the 13th virgins out there. Simply put, it's a horror film that every horror fan knows and probably knows well. After Part 4 the sequels begin to drastically drop in quality - but the original quadrilogy (I think 4 movies is a quadrilogy....?) is great campy, scary fun. It should have ended there based on the titles alone anyway; Part 4 was titled "The Final Chapter," but now we somehow have 10 movies in the franchise.
Morbidly enough, what fans of slasher films love most are gruesome death sequences - of which this film has plenty of due to the hugely talented make-up effects guru Tom Savini, who famously invented a lot of the zombie make-up effects in most of George Romero's films. The death scenes are scary in Friday the 13th because they are pretty unexpected (Kevin Bacon's spear-through-the-throat bit was both disturbing and groundbreaking work). And of course there's ugly "Lil' Jason," a bulbous freakazoid who drowned due to the likes of ignorant camp counsellors preoccupied more by their libidos than a child screaming for dear life as he violently drowns at in a lake. People forget that Jason is hardly in the original movie, and that he didn't sport his trademark hockey mask until Part 3. Nevertheless, it's still a fun knicker-wetting romp at summer camp.
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